Trinidad & Tobago

Fundamentally gangsterism

Not Islam, just violent crime

POLICE used an excavator to dig up the floor of an office adjoining a mosque near Port of Spain, Trinidad's capital, in a search for weapons. The dig was fruitless, but elsewhere in the mosque complex they found a gun, a grenade and ammunition. On November 11th they charged the mosque's imam, Yasin Abu Bakr, with firearms offences. He already faced charges of sedition and a retrial for conspiracy to murder. Six other mosques were raided, though nothing more was found.

Rather than Islamic terrorism, Trinidad would seem to be facing a simple crime wave, albeit a worrying one. Mr Bakr is an ex-policeman formerly known as Lennox Phillip. He leads Jamaat al Muslimeen, a group of mainly Afro-Trinidadian converts to Islam. In 1990, they staged an attempted coup, holding the prime minister and parliament at gunpoint. Mr Bakr vigorously denies claims that his followers carry out extortion, kidnapping and drug trafficking. His latest arrest was triggered by an end-of-Ramadan sermon saying that blood might flow if Muslim businesses refused to pay their annual tithe to his mosque.

With a booming oil and natural gas industry, Trinidad & Tobago is more prosperous than much of the English-speaking Caribbean. It is also less violent. But the gap is closing: the murder rate has climbed to one a day. Five small bombs in the capital since July have added to the panic. Some 15,000 joined a march against crime last month. “You have failed us,” newspaper advertisements by civic groups tell the prime minister, Patrick Manning.

Many of the factors behind crime, such as the cocaine trade, violent youth gangs, and poor policing, are common to other Caribbean islands. The government is spending $400m—3% of GDP—on patrol boats, helicopters and coastal radar to staunch the flow of drugs and guns.

The complicating factor is race. Trinidad's population of 1.3m is split roughly equally between the descendants of African slaves and those of Indian indentured labourers. Indo-Trinidadians blame crime on blacks. Their leader, Basdeo Panday, says Mr Manning's government is “part of the crime”. In office until 2001, Mr Panday proposed police reforms. Now he blocks them. On November 14th, politicians from both sides began talks on the crime wave. Trinidadians will doubtless hope these result in more than a blame game.